Disturbing trend: glorifying horrible dives on social media.

[scubadada]

Here is one such video of a highly skilled diver crossing paths with the most savage and cunning predator of the sea, the dreaded remora. Gasp!

Like Blair Witch underwater I think it is a Sharksucker

 

[shoredivr]

In the last few days/weeks I’ve noticed an uptick in some very strange dive stories involving some trust me deep dives into deco, people running out of air with deco obligations, crazy deep dives by some Russian group (which was extremely painfull to try and read, but I think I got the jist of it). There was a vid posted about another completely disfunctional dive in the St. Lawrence River by a guy who didn’t even seem to have the skills to clear a mask at depth and had no idea what coming up slow meant or sticking with buddies. All this seems bad enough, but a few of them actually glorified some of this disfunction as if it’s almost normal and just part of their diving life.
There was one line that stuck with me when a gal said “it was the funnest dive ever!!”. This was after just about running out of air with deco obligation and several of her group actually running OOA.
Reading some of this stuff and watching some of these videos is like the twilight zone. The one about the absolute freak out with ripped off mask and those eyeballs was extremely unsettling. How are these people getting certified to even get this far?

Am I imagining things or is this something that becoming an epidemic? Do these people even know how horrible their diving and common sense really is???
Or is this just the forward progession of our new online social media world where everybody puts their entire life on display for everyone to see, good and bad?

The St Lawrence River Lillie Drift dive video is from 2014. These days that is ancient news.

 

[txgoose]

Plenty of generations have had non-conformists partaking in plenty of hobbies and dangerous activities. Plenty of generations are represented by those that choose to expose way too much on social media. Access to cheap and small cameras is all this is IMO. Claiming one generation’s purity and disparaging another’s seems intellectually lazy to me.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I personally think it’s not so much about the dive gone bad or the divers lack of shame about horrible skills or diving way beyond their limits, or lack of situational awareness, or just plain doing stupid things and not even being ashamed, or in some cases glorifying it.
I think the number one end goal is to get a video that stands a chance to go viral. Any attention is better than no attention. Even negative attention gives them a feeling of importance and elevates them above mediocrity, even if for only a minute.
It doesn’t matter that people rip them or bash them, they just love to cause controversy.

 

[Dogbowl]

Interesting article:

New study reveals the most dangerous selfie location

Technology a factor? Yes.
Age/being a millennial a factor? Yes.
Country a factor? Yes.

 

[PfcAJ]

Pole sitting - Wikipedia

Yeah, people doing stupid stuff is a recent development...

 

[StefinSB]

Pole sitting - Wikipedia

Yeah, people doing stupid stuff is a recent development...

No it isn’t, but the reach using social media is.

 

[scubafanatic]

Plenty of generations have had non-conformists partaking in plenty of hobbies and dangerous activities. Plenty of generations are represented by those that choose to expose way too much on social media. Access to cheap and small cameras is all this is IMO. Claiming one generation’s purity and disparaging another’s seems intellectually lazy to me.

Agreed, cheap portable cameras, Facebook, youtube, etc have all combined to a trifecta whereby stupidity is easily, cheaply, rapidly sharable, humans haven't really changed in tens of thousands of years, I'm sure neolithic kids were scribbling graffiti on Stonehenge back in the day, but there's no Go Pro evidence of it.